


shock to your system

by consultingwives (westminsterabi)



Series: Quinlock Shorts [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F, Female John, Female Sherlock, Femlock, Lesbian Sherlock, POV Female Character, POV First Person, POV Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock-centric, Songfic, post-Reichenbach Angst, suicide cw, tegan and sara
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 07:44:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6695950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westminsterabi/pseuds/consultingwives
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I can't remember the colour of her eyes or the way her voice sounds. What happens in two years, when I can't picture her face or feel her hand on mine and I feel as if I've lost her forever? What if I actually die when I'm over there, and she has to go to a second funeral and I never have a chance to explain myself?"</p><p>Sherlock can't function after the fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shock to your system

**Author's Note:**

> Songfic based on "Shock to Your System" by Tegan and Sara.

_You seem like you're so restless, young at heart._

 

Less than an hour after, my brain feels wrong, like someone's pumped out the vital oxygen that I need to think and replaced it with sludge. The cogs are completely gummed up, stuttering, shifting out of place and I can't think straight. Me. I can't think straight. Normally that's the only comfort I have and as they whisk me away in one of Mycroft's cars with the tinted windows I realise that this is what it feels like to be ordinary.  

 

_Who gave you reason?_

 

That night I manage a full two hours of sleep before I wake up screaming in the back room of my brother's country house, filling the empty rooms with hollow cries before I stuff my fist in my mouth and weep. I was screaming John's name.

 

_You should be out driving people wild._

 

It's two more wakeful hours before the pounding starts behind my left eye. It’s only once a stressor has been eliminated that the body's response starts. John told me that when the migraines started two days after the pool. So here's my response to the last five days, the worst headache I've felt in my life, so painful that it makes me want to scream again because even though my worst fear is gone, I felt John's hand against my lifeless wrist only six hours ago and it will be years until I can feel her hand again. If I ever do. Someone's driving an awl through my prefrontal cortex.

 

_Who gave you a reason?_

 

Mycroft tells me disdainfully he doesn't have any opioids when he finds me in his bathroom, raiding the medicine cabinet, hundreds of empty bottles strewn around me. There are tears streaming from my eyes, and I'd be heaving if I'd eaten anything since two days ago. I can feel my stomach revolting against me.

 

_You got a shock to your system._

 

I tell him I need paracetamol, not opioids, and he tells me to stop yelling, and then I collapse against the bathtub and black out.

 

_Knocked your heart right out of sync._

 

"When was the last time you ate?"

 

I wake up in the same bed from last night, with Mycroft watching me.

 

"Two, three days ago."

 

"For god's sake, Sherlock."

 

"Well, I'm sorry that eating hasn't exactly been my priority since I got smeared in the press and jumped off the top of Bart's Hospital." My head is still pounding, and I shove my face into a pillow. It feels a little better, but I still feel as if I might puke any minute.

 

_You're only meant to hurt once in a while._

 

I scream again, this time into the pillow. I feel a bit better now.

 

_Who gave you reason._

 

I'm dead, legally dead, Molly Hooper has by this time signed the certificate and laid out the body of Moriarty's henchwoman. Me. Legally, at least. My corpse. My body, that's going underground in a few days for John to weep over and Mrs Hudson to weep over and for them to all assume that this is the end of my story, the end of my days—suicide. Honestly, why not finish the job right now?

 

Mycroft leaves the room.

 

_You're only mean to cry once in a while._

 

I'm exhausted enough that despite the searing pain behind my eyes I can fall asleep.

 

It doesn't help because once I dream, there are two things I dream. First, I dream that John tells me she loves me, and I dream that we two lean into each other and kiss sloppy and messy and run to her room upstairs and strip faster than I can blink. I can't believe that this is real because it's not, but it feels real while it's happening until John says _Sherlock, I can't believe you're dead_ and someone clobbers me over the head and I wake up I'm on the top of Bart's again.

 

I try to change my mind about what I do here. "John, this phone call...it's my note. Tell them it was my note. Listen to me, John, don't believe what you see, _I'll be back for you_. Goodbye, John."

 

Instead I stick to the script and listen to John scream my name as I jump and land on the airbag.

 

Then we rewind and I get to do it again. And again. And again. Every time I stick to the script and nothing changes no matter how much I want to yell to John that it's just a trick.

 

_Who gave you a reason._

 

 I wake up again next to a tray of eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee, and a note from Mycroft. Also, two paracetamol next to a glass of water. I swallow them dry and push the rest away.

 

_You got a shock to your system._

 

There's a lump in my throat and I feel as if I'm about to gag. I shouldn't have swallowed the pills dry. I'm out of practice. My phone is on the night table, dead. Someone must have grabbed it when they dragged Moriarty's body off the top of Bart's. It's barely got a scratch, which is surprising. I don't plug it in. I don't want to know what I've been sent in the hours since I took my last breath as a real person, instead of as a ghost.

 

_Pull yourself out of it._

 

I can feel the pain fading, and I hope that it doesn't relapse. Two fingers on my temple, and I rub in circles, hoping it'll finally go away for good. But it doesn't, it just stays there, a dull, throbbing pain that isn't as bad as it was before. I still feel distracted, scatter-brained.

 

_I know that shock to your system._

 

John. She thinks that I'm dead. She _watched_ me die, in her eyes. She felt my wrist and felt no thready pulse, no steady beat pushing my blood through my veins because of that squash ball I shoved under my armpit. In her eyes I'm dead forever, never to return to this world. She will think that until I come back. I can't imagine bearing however long it takes to dismantle Moriarty's network without John, without talking to her.

 

I plug my phone in.

 

_Knocked your heart right out of sync._

Without thinking about the consequences, I call John's phone and listen to her voicemail, and realise what a profoundly stupid idea that was only after the tone. I hang up.

 

_What you are, what you are._

 

She calls back.

 

"Who the _fuck,_ what the _fuck_ are you doing with this phone, whoever you are, you bastard, on the other end of the line, I _know_ you're hearing me, that phone is evidence, it belongs to the police and if you don't turn it over I swear to god I'll track you down and pry if from your cold dead hands myself, you _sick piece of shit_. You have twenty-four hours. What _the fuck_ is wrong with you?" Her voice breaks.

 

Click.

 

_What you are, what you are._

 

"This is evidence, Mycroft. You should take it to Lestrade."

 

"No need. 'Your phone' was smashed beyond recovery in the fall. No back-up."

 

"Good foresight."

 

"Well, little sister, that's never exactly been your forte."

 

"You should take this away from me."

 

He looks puzzled, by takes it from my hand and locks it in the drawer of his desk.

 

"You really shouldn't have done that," he says.

 

"I know."

 

_What you are is lonely._

My only friend in the world, and she just called me a sack of shit or whatever wording she used. Not that she knew it was me. But what if I'd said it? What if I'd just said, "I'm alive, don't worry, I'm coming back." This wasn't my dream; I could so easily have done that.

 

But I didn't.

 

_What you are._

 

I can't remember the colour of her eyes or the way her voice sounds. What happens in two years, when I can't picture her face or feel her hand on mine and I feel as if I've lost her forever? What if I actually die when I'm over there, and she has to go to a second funeral and I never have a chance to explain myself?

 

I can't die. I refuse. I'm coming back for her.  

 

_What you are is lonely._

What will happen to me? With John, I've been a different person. Softer, kinder. Important to someone. And now I'm important to no one. I have never in my life been more completely, utterly, and entirely alone.

 

_What you are._

 

It's when I realize that John won't be able to see my woes or decode me while I go through this alone that I finally break down and Mycroft finds me on the floor of the bathroom again, crying because there's no other way to get this feeling out of me without clawing my amygdala out or shooting up.

 

_You must rely on love once in a while._

 

But John will be there, when I get back. When I crash down the door to Baker Street and she smiles and cries because I'm actually standing there, in front of her, and everything can just go back to how it was.

 

_To give you reason._

 

Can things go back to the way they were before?

 

_You must rely on love once in a while._

She might not love me back, but I refuse to believe that she won't wait for me.

 

"You have fifteen texts from John Watson, demanding that you turn over this phone to the police. What have you done?"

 

"I just called her."  

 

"You're supposed to be dead."

 

"Oh, really? I'd forgotten."

 

_To give you reason._

 

"What can I do to make you stop doing this?"

 

"Let me change my mind. Let me go back and change my mind."

 

"You know I can't do that."

 

"What if I just called her?"

 

"You've already done that."

 

"Again, I mean."

 

"You can't go on in this state."

 

_You got a shock to your system._

 

He's right. Maybe this pain will fade. Maybe in a month, or two, or a year, I'll stop feeling this way about John Watson. I'll stop wishing she were here, guiding my every move, telling me when I misstep or say something wrong. I'll stop craving her voice like honey and stop dreaming about the two of us fucking softly, because after all, that'll never happen in real life. I might as well stop hoping for it.

 

_Pull yourself out of it._

 

"Go see her."

 

"Are you insane?"

 

"She doesn't have to see you. Just say goodbye. Closure, you know. I've heard that people like that sort of thing. Not that you're usually _people._ Then again, you don't usually lie on bathroom floors without a needle in your arm, either."

 

"Yes."

 

"Yes what?"

 

"Yes, I'll go see her. I'll say goodbye."

 

"She and Mrs Hudson are going to the cemetery later today. You can take the car."

 

"Thank you."

 

"Sherlock."

 

"Yes?"

 

"You need to pull yourself together."

 

_I know that shock to your system._

 

"I will." I rise off the tile and promptly lean over the toilet to vomit. "I promise."

 

"I'm not optimistic," he says, stepping out and shutting the door.

 

My stomach is empty, so there's nothing but water and the remnants of breakfast from the day before I jumped. The paracetamol's already been absorbed, but I can feel the pounding in my brain starting again. I wonder if I could sneak some alcohol, if I can't have drugs. Mycroft would bust me in a second. Alcohol might not bother him as much. My concentration is shot anyway, so why not?

 

_What you are, what you are._

 

I heave again, and this time there's absolutely nothing. I feel faint. I walk back over to the bedroom and take a few bites of toast, hoping that they won't just come right back up. They don't, so I start on the eggs and I can feel the cogs in my brain start to work again.

 

_What you are, what you are._

 

I get dressed and Mycroft calls his driver.

 

"You could tell her," he says. "If it will stop you from being an inconsolable mess."

 

"I can't."

 

_What you are is lonely._

 

It's a short drive to where my body is buried. The sight of John and Mrs Hudson with flowers, climbing out of the back of a cab, almost takes the breath out of me, and suddenly I can't think. I can hear them talking, and then Mrs Hudson turns away and leaves the two of us alone.

 

She takes a deep breath.

 

_What you are._

 

"You, you told me, once, that you weren't a hero."

 

_What you are is lonely._

 

It's all that I can do not to break down, not to run over the graves of the long-deceased and take her in my arms and scream that I'm alive, that she doesn't have to mourn me anymore. I wish I could grab her and carry her off around the world with me to take down Moriarty's network, but I can't.

 

_What you are._

"There were times I didn't even think you were human."

 

She goes on, she tells me things that make me want to weep. I feel terrible, but there's nothing I can do. Mycroft was wrong. This isn't goodbye, this isn't closure. This is the most painful thing that I've ever witnessed, and the only way to stop feeling the pain is to cut out my heart and bury it with that fake corpse John's crying over.

 

_What you are is lonely._

 

"One more miracle, one more miracle, for me, Sherlock."

 

_What you are is lonely._

 

"Don't be dead."

 

_What you are is lonely._

 

There's only one way to stop feeling this.

 


End file.
